Saying that the Orlando shooting is an attack on America feels like saying that an attack on tribal lands is an attack on America. This is a group of people that have been continually attacked by American policy and culture from day one, and those of us who are not part of the LGBTQ community do not have the right to claim their pain as our own. It has been less than a year since the right to marry was granted by the Supreme Court, for fuck’s sake, and in a majority of the country it’s legal to fire someone for their gender identity.
Empathy is great. It’s a huge part of who we are as a species, but pretending that someone else’s pain and grief are your own is not empathy. That’s going to a stranger’s funeral and shouting down the bereaved by saying you’re in more pain than them.
I may have more to say on this later in the week, but for the time being, I just wanted to tell my fellow people outside the LGBTQ community – when you do this, you’re basically saying that anybody who’s not heterosexual and cisgender belongs to you, and only you get to decide what to do with them. Fuck that. Don’t do that.
Did you want to be part of the community of ‘America’ or not?
Would you rather people not care, since “it was only ‘homos’ that were killed.”?
Please don’t try to diminish people’s compassion, there is little enough of it as it is.
You missed the point.
The people claiming this is an attack on “all of America” are mostly the same ones who were fighting against marriage equality in the first place.
Beyond that, while it would be great to be one big, happy country, that’s not the reality, and pretending it IS is an insult to those who are suffering BECAUSE it’s not a reality. Hopefully in the future that will change. As it stands, the actions of non-LGBTQ people have made that into a separate community, just as the actions of white people have created racial divides within our country.
Saying “this is an attack on all of us” erases the fact that it was NOT an attack on all of us – it was an attack on one specific group, and while we can stand in solidarity, we also need to recognize when we are not part of that group. Erasing the target means erasing the primary motivation, and glossing over any investigation of how our society breeds this kind of hatred. It’s another version of saying that this was “just Islamic terrorism”, not the latest and most bloody of thousands of hate crimes stretching back generations.
Again, take the funeral analogy – by all means, offer compassion to the family of a stranger who just died, but don’t go around pretending that you feel the same grief as that family. That’s not compassion. It’s self-indulgence, and it’s minimizing and insulting the grief of those who knew and loved the deceased.
Compassion and empathy are wonderful things. Feeling and showing them does not involve claiming that an attack on someone else is actually an attack on you.
I understand you are saying there are assholes appropriating this tragedy without acknowledging that the target was the LGBTQ community. They are assholes.
At the same time, I do think this is an attack on our shared core values, or what should be our shared core values. Frank Bruni put it nicely:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/13/opinion/the-scope-of-the-orlando-carnage.html?src=me&_r=0
Boy, you ask people to not appropriate your pain and in rush a bunch of people to hetsplain how no, it really is an attack on all of us. Lovely.
We know what attacks on “all of us” look like. If he had wanted to attack our “freedoms” for supporting LGTB rights, he would have shot up a military funeral or something.
Devocate, steveht, and Bruni, is it so hard to just be compassionate while admitting that it’s not about us? Do you seriously think to yourself “OMG, next time I go to a bar, that could happen!” Because I sure don’t.
Johnny V, feel free to read a bit more on Bruni.
I can understand this sentiment. But I have a further problem – I actually am LGBT (well, G…), but I don’t feel that I am any more especially connected to the victims of this tragedy than any of my peers are. It would feel like trying to usurp someone else’s funeral, as you say, for me to express any kind of personal grief beyond acknowledgment that this was a very bad business indeed and should never happen again.
I’m not American, which is probably a big part of it. I am aware of homophobic horrors perpetrated across the globe, in Syria, Uganda, Russia… even a few in England where I do live. But they happen to people I have never met in places I am never going to see, and acknowledging how horrible they are is about as far as I can reasonably go. The fact that they were perpetrated based on a characteristic I share doesn’t make me feel I am somehow a legitimate part of the suffering. I shave, but ISIS’s persecution of the beardless doesn’t make me feel more valid in my declamation of ISIS than their persecution of anyone else. But there were mass turnouts and vigils in London in solidarity yesterday, so clearly at least some other LGBT people who aren’t Americans either do feel more connected to it.
I also don’t really know any other LGBT people, so I don’t really feel part of an “LGBT community”. I have not experienced anything by way of direct persecution or homophobia myself, so it seems a bit rich pretending that I somehow understand what it’s like just because I have a certain set of sexual desires. That would feel like trying to assume vicarious victimhood for personal edification – a slap in the face to those who really did suffer.
I’m sure that the families of those departed in no way think that you are trying to usurp their pain for you political agenda. Or are you saying that you feel the same grief as they do?
Pretty sure anyone with empathy does indeed have a share in the pain. And no, this is nowhere near similar to “going to a stranger’s funeral and shouting down the bereaved by saying you’re in more pain than them.” That’s a farcically inaccurate simile.
It appears I spoke too soon.
Not engaging with trolldom, but with this sentence noting its existence. Yuck.
Super important to remember! It was a latinx night, meaning most of the victims were of another class persecuted by republican swine. So the OP’s point is righteous for the same reason on another level.
Thank you for the reminder, Satan!
Holms, the second comment was a reference to the sundry high-profile homophobes who have been declaring this to be an attack on all Americans. It’s OK to attack them if THEY do it, just not if a Muslim does it.
Glad to know a homophobe specifically targeting gay people is somehow an attack against america as a whole and not a specifically targeted hate crime.
If a homophobic parent disowns their kid, are they disowning all of america?
@ ^ Vivec : Slightly different way of phrasing your question :
Are they being unAmerican in violating the best aspects and values of what makes one American in the best sense of what that means?
I’m an Aussie. So its not really up to me and I don’t know anyhow. But maybe could be so?
I think there are echoes of the global Je suis Charlie Hebdo / Ahmed Merabet statements by a lot of people who are not obviously either French cartoonists or Muslim guards on their buildings here.
Seems to me its just good people identifying with and standing with the victims here and I think that’s a damn good thing and something we should support.
We’re all people Homo sapiens. Could be some of us realise that and try to make others do so too and that’s worth doing whoever and where and whatever else? Maybe by empathising and imagining and trying to put yourself in the place of people you actually ain’t is possibly intrinsically worth doing?
But see above. I don’t really know, just my view, FWIW & okay if YMMV natch.
Correction because I stuffed up :
We’re all people.Homo sapiens. Could be some of us realise that and try to make others do so too and that’s worth doing whoever and where and whatever else we might be and are?
Also one more thing, at risk of falling afoul of Godwin’s Law
There’s a wonderful if not quite factual myth that the Danish King asked to turn over the Jewish people in his kingdom to the Nazi’s instead chose to put on himself a Jewish Yellow Star* badge. Do you think as a non-Jew he should have not done so or that that wouldn’t have been a powerful good gesture of strength and shared humanity even though the King clearly wasn’t Jewish?
Can we please look to what unites us and who we empathise with and support as fellow humans instead of indulging in division and hate and the worst rather than best of our human potential please?
* Its a complicated and, I hope, interesting & good story :
http://www.jta.org/2015/02/21/default/the-star-of-david-myth-and-the-world-war-ii-rescue-of-danish-jewry
Sorry about the spoiler quote but I hope it makes y’all think. People are people and can help people. If they choose. Wherever, whatever, wherever, however else. People. Think and be kind. Please.
I think it is, but that’s not what I hear when someone like Scott Brown or Donald Trump claim this is an attack on America, not LGBTQ folks, or as Great American Satan reminded me, the Latinx subset of that group.
When someone who has spent their career lying about and working against the rights of LGBTQ people comes out and claims that this was an attack on them, that’s no solidarity, it’s erasure. It’s like insisting that Alan Turing wasn’t gay, he was just another human.
These people aren’t putting themselves in the line of fire for someone else, they’re using an attack on people they work against to further a different agenda, and to pretend that there’s nothing wrong with their own prejudices and homophobic/transphobic/racist rhetoric.